


Colour Me Blue

by tsauergrass



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (the usual because well it's the boys), M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Andrew Minyard, Therapy, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22793233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsauergrass/pseuds/tsauergrass
Summary: He was walking in a pipe dream. When their hands were not stuffed in their pockets but swaying by their sides, they grazed—knuckle against knuckle, the tip of their fingers, touch as light as a feather. It coursed through Andrew’s veins and the world silenced in a heartbeat, as though sinking to the bottom of a pool, every detail reverberating like dancing light: Neil’s hands swaying by his side as he walked, their feet rising and falling in a rhythm, the motion repetitive yet pushing on. His tense shoulders, his pulse pounding in his ears. His fingers twitched every now and then, as though yearning.Andrew did not yearn.Neil started collecting enamel pins. Andrew didn't care, because why would he?
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 21
Kudos: 160





	Colour Me Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [augustskies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustskies/gifts).



> Dear K, I hope you see this first thing in the morning haha! Thank you for being the wonderful person you are for all the years we've known each other—six and going on seven, to be exact, woah we are old. To know you and be your friend is one of the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me, and no word in this world is sufficient to describe what this, all this, means (I know because I've tried three times lol). I hope you enjoy this little piece, and, even though your birthday had already passed, have a very happy day today and the rest of the year <3
> 
> Title taken from Blue by Troye Sivan

Once, Bee said that everything was a dance.

Andrew disagreed. He was looking out of the window from Bee’s office, at the blue sky. There wasn’t a trace of cloud. Just a clear, tender blue, fading as it pushes away from the center.

“It’s the rhythm,” Bee said. “When you do crafts, or when you interact with people…there is always a rhythm. Back and forth, like a flow. When you get it, it carries you.”

What she did not say was that when you didn’t get it, it drowned you. That was what water did. Andrew did not say any of that. Instead he watched as Bee stirred her hot chocolate, as she took a sip. She had just changed brands. Andrew liked the one before better.

He didn’t say any of that either. Turning his head, he looked out of the window again. The blue was soft and flawless, a petal of satin framed in a small rectangle.

***

It started with a tiny enamel pin.

They were smoking on the rooftop. It was April and raining; the rain chilled the air and sent them back to early spring, back to the fading end of winter, the earth just starting to stir—but not quite yet, still muzzled from hibernation, tentative warmth quickly dissipating into the cold air as though forgotten. It was too chilly to wear a t-shirt. Andrew had his Palmetto hoodie on, had stuffed his hands into the pouch.

They kept to the patio. Now and then Neil looked up at the sky and exhaled, breathing smoke. The auburn of his hair glowed under the pale sky like fire.

Suddenly Neil lifted his cigarette and pointed. “What’s that?”

A glint of gold in the far corner. Andrew placed his cigarette back between his lips.

“Probably a zipper.”

“A zipper?”

“Or a beer cap.”

Neil looked at the glint of gold. The rain pattered on, relentless.

“Hold this.”

Andrew stared at Neil’s outstretched hand, at the cigarette butt between his fingers. Stared back at Neil. Neil looked back at him, almost earnest.

“You’re not going out there for some junk,” Andrew said flatly.

Neil shrugged. “I’m a junkie. That’s what I do.”

“That was a horrible pun.”

Neil laughed, small and quick. It startled Andrew. Fleeting, the sound dissipated into the air and all that was left was the pattering rain, falling heavily.

Andrew took the cigarette butt and looked away. “Drench yourself, whatever. I don’t care.”

“Noted,” Neil said, and then dashed out. Water splashed at his heels; the bright red of his hair bobbed, and then as quickly as he was gone he was back again, breathing heavily and soaked from the inside out. He ran a hand through his hair, shook his head like a dog. Andrew leaned away so as not to wet his hoodie. Neil held out his hand.

“It’s a pin.”

It was a pin. An enamel pin, the little fox framed with gold. It had a bushy tail and was looking at its left, eyes thin and black.

“It’s cute,” Neil said.

“You’re biased.”

“You don’t think it’s cute?”

“No.”

“Well,” Neil said, stuffing the little fox into his pocket, “You’re biased.”

Andrew resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Neil caught him anyway and grinned.

***

It was surreal, sometimes. Walking together in silence, smoking on the roof at midnight after practice, waking up to Neil next to him, eyes closed and still asleep. Waking up and finding that he had not woken in the middle of the night, that he had slept through with someone next to him.

He was walking in a pipe dream. When their hands were not stuffed in their pockets but swaying by their sides, they grazed—knuckle against knuckle, the tip of their fingers, touch as light as a feather. It coursed through Andrew’s veins and the world silenced in a heartbeat, as though sinking to the bottom of a pool, every detail reverberating like dancing light: Neil’s hands swaying by his side as he walked, their feet rising and falling in a rhythm, the motion repetitive yet pushing on. His tense shoulders, his pulse pounding in his ears. His fingers twitched every now and then, as though yearning.

Andrew did not yearn.

Neil’s hands were covered in callous, soft and firm and rough. Fingernails blunt, slightly swelled at the knobs, hints of faded scars cutting softly through skin. Those were hands that have killed, that have fought and defended.

Those were hands that have touched him.

Andrew thought of his own hands. These were hands that have killed, too, and drugged and marred not only others but also himself.

He thought of his armbands and what were underneath, white scars slitting tender skin.

He thought of the one time he’d held Neil’s face in his hands. A night just after Baltimore, their dorm room empty; in the dark, Neil pressed his face against Andrew’s hands. Under Andrew’s palms were crawling scar tissues and soft cheeks, a map of marred and smooth.

His face in Andrew’s hands, Neil closed his blue eyes.

Andrew stopped himself from thinking.

***

“I found another one,” Neil said.

Andrew turned around in his chair. Neil closed the door and headed over, a plastic bag in hand.

“You found another one,” Andrew said flatly, “or you bought another one?”

“I found another one in a store, and I bought it.”

Nicky whooped as he ran out of the bedroom and took the bag from Neil, digging through. Movie night was starting; it was now hosted in Matt’s dorm room because not everyone, namely Kevin, was interested enough in watching movies. Nicky dug out Kevin’s vanilla bean ice cream and then looked up at Neil. “Are you coming?”

“No,” Neil said. “I have five pages of Spanish.”

“Ah, five pages of Spanish.” Nicky winked. Andrew wanted to throw a knife at him. “Well, have fun—” he tossed a pint to Andrew and another to Neil, blowing a kiss before he shut the door _—“Que te cunda!”_

Andrew glared at the door. Neil looked down at his pint.

“I think he gave me yours,” he said.

Andrew looked down at his: espresso, Neil’s go-to flavor. Neil turned the pint towards him, and in his hands was Andrew’s triple chocolate. Andrew huffed and, pushing himself up to get the spoons, tossed the espresso to Neil.

“Take your boring espresso back and give me my triple chocolate.”

“What if I lick it?”

“Gross and childish.”

Neil pretended to lick the pint. Andrew grabbed it out of his hands. He very much cherished his chocolate ice cream, the sweeter the more precious.

“Do you want to see my new pin?” Neil asked. He had started a collection: the little fox was sitting on his desk, and next to it a budding cactus, a ginger cat, an Exy racket. Andrew threw himself onto the bean bag and waited.

“Well?”

“You’re going to show me anyway,” Andrew said, “so go ahead.”

“No I’m not.”

“I’ll see it on your desk eventually.”

It was an ice cream cone, strawberry pink and sprinkled with white chocolate. Andrew did not much like strawberry flavored ice cream. There was never a good balance between sweetness and fakeness.

“You’re just going to put them on your desk?” Andrew asked, leaning back. “What a shame. Such they are made of, such they don’t get to be.”

Neil tilted his head. “I’ll think of something.”

***

A tiny flaw of figurines is that it is difficult to find one of a bee. Andrew had, because of Exy, gone through more than one airport and, for his cigarettes, skimmed more than one convenience store—he was only short of looking online, really—but so far he had never seen a bee figurine.

He brought one of a French Bulldog to his next session with Bee. Bee seemed like a French Bulldog kind of person.

“Thank you, Andrew,” Bee said, looking delighted. She placed it onto her shelf where her line of figurines stood and filled the space closest to them. “A lot of people don’t like Bulldogs.”

“I thought that happened more with Pit bulls.”

“Yes. Most Bulldogs, really. People seem to be afraid of them.”

Andrew thought of a dog’s snapping jaw, its razor-sharp teeth. He thought of them whining happily as they rubbed and nuzzled a person’s lap, tail wagging so hard it might fall off.

He thought of Neil’s growing collection of miscellaneous enamel pins.

He took a sip of hot chocolate. Bee had changed brands again, this one richer with the subtle bitterness of cocoa. He’d taken a first sip and immediately wanted to add marshmallows, but didn’t ask.

“Neil is collecting enamel pins,” he said.

“He is,” Bee said—as though it was a question, but at the same time not. Instead of anything else she bent down and began rummaging through her drawers. Andrew sat and waited. He thought again about adding marshmallows.

“Aha! Here it is.” She straightened up, face flushed from the effort, and in her hands was an enamel pin of a bumble bee, wings outspread with intricate patterns.

Andrew stared flatly at it.

“You see,” Bee said, smiling, “it is so much easier to find a bee enamel pin.”

***

They kissed a lot.

Or maybe it was just how it felt, to have lost something then have it back again, filling and brimming and pouring out of your hands until it flooded and you were gasping, drowning, yet still you wanted more. They kissed not during the day but after practice, in the dusk, after Neil followed him up the roof and they’d smoked a cigarette or two. Then Neil stubbed his cigarette out on the concrete, silent.

It always started soft.

Strange, because soft was never the word Andrew would use to describe himself—not him, not Neil. Yet the kiss itself was soft. In the few seconds before they started opening their mouths, the few seconds after their lips touched and before things heated up—it was soft.

Chapped lips against chapped lips, mouth tasting of smoke.

Yet they knew the bow of each other’s lips, the swells and dips. Knew where to fit, where to slot in, where to seal. Knew what to expect, cuts on their own mouths before lips turned plump, soft from all the kissing—as though melted, as though dissolved. Losing shape as though shape didn’t matter. Neil didn’t touch him until he nodded or gestured, and until then he kept his hands on the concrete, the heels of his palms digging against the rock hard ground. Their fingers grazed. Andrew wound his own hands into Neil’s hair and tightened—forgetting himself in order to hold on, to be greedy, to take and take and take.

The noises from the back of Neil’s throat were soft, too, fleeting. Involuntary.

Sometimes it came back when they touched, when Neil roamed his hands over his body—nauseating and dizzy, memories threatening to spill and flood and take over. He clamped them down. He made an effort. He hadn’t made an effort in so long yet it came back without rust, like rowing a boat upstream, battling the water.

He wondered if he could call it a battle if there was no danger in the first place.

There was always danger, he had to remind himself. It used to come intrinsically.

***

“I just don’t understand why he’s dating him.”

“People have weird tastes.”

“I know, but Andrew Minyard?”

Andrew flicked the sparks off his cigarette and placed it back into his mouth.

“It’s such a waste. He could have been dating, I don’t know—Lucy Shay.”

A giggle. “Lucy Shay?”

“Anyone from the cheerleading team would have been better! Actually, no, _anyone_ else would have been better.” The voice dropped, seductive with dangerous gossip. “I heard they call him _Monster_ in their own team. Imagine your own teammates calling you a monster.”

That night, after the lights were turned off in the dorm room—after Kevin went still, and Nicky started snoring—Andrew allowed himself to look at Neil for a minute longer. Moonlight flooded the bedding, frost-white. Neil’s lashes caught the silvery dust.

His breath was faint and steady, the cover rising and falling with his chest.

Slowly, Andrew adjusted his own breathing until they matched: inhale, and exhale, inhale, and exhale. He counted the freckles on Neil’s face. There was one at the bridge of his nose that wasn’t there before. He counted them again.

Summer was coming, and Andrew was leaving.

He counted them one last time, just to make sure. The numbers were nothing but numbers. He turned over and shut his eyes.

***

“Look, I got a new one.”

It was a bright magenta peony. Neil turned his denim jacket this way and that, trying to find a space. He looked up at Andrew. “Where should I put it?”

Andrew stared at Neil and his blue, earnest eyes. Nicky, the genius, bought Neil a denim jacket and said, _now you can stick your pins on here!_ Voila, Neil now had a denim jacket. Though he seemed more often to pin his new additions on than actually wearing it.

“Left side of your chest,” Andrew said, turning back to the television. “Under the fox and next to the bumble bee.”

Neil worked the pin into the thick fabric. Lifted the jacket, examined it; nudged the pin a little to the right. In their dorm room, Neil didn’t wear his arm bands. The scars cut through his bare, skinny arms like art by a five-year-old, drawn while crying hysterically and throwing a tantrum.

Andrew thought of running his hands along the scars.

He wondered what they would feel like under his fingers.

He looked down at his own hand. They were pale, dry, knuckles prominent behind thin skin.

Neil pushed himself up, denim jacket in hand. “Contemplating life, Shakespeare reincarnated?”

Andrew looked back to the television. Clenched his fists, loosened them. “Shut up, junkie.”

***

Once, Andrew asked Bee if she knew how to dance. She seemed like a dancing kind of person.

“Not particularly,” Bee said, after a few thoughtful seconds. “Swaying and shaking your arms and enjoying yourself? Yes, definitely. But I don’t really know how to dance.”

“I thought swaying and shaking your arms was dancing.”

Bee laughed. “So many people are going to bristle, hearing you say that.”

Andrew didn’t dance. He knew Neil didn’t, either. Yet every time Neil laughed the corner of his eyes crinkled, his laughter bright, and Andrew’s mind quieted—it was never quiet, Andrew’s mind—and he could see the clear blue of Neil’s eyes, crisp like a winter sky. His fingers twitched. He looked at his own hands and saw blood, saw Neil—resting his face in the hands of a killer. Closing his eyes.

The soft of his cheeks beneath the marring scars ghosting across Andrew’s palms.

***

June was here, and Andrew was leaving.

It was raining. The air was sticky and humid; the rain washed away all the sounds in Palmetto. The lush green of the trees glowed along the sidewalks, along the streets.

They were smoking on the roof, under the patio. Neil dangled his cigarette between his fingers and the cigarette burnt away, smoke dissipating in the falling rain. Every now and then he looked up at the sky and placed the cigarette into his mouth before taking it out again.

Andrew kept his eyes to the skyline.

He was still afraid of heights. But he found the skyline wasn’t as intimidating, that far away.

“Andrew,” Neil said. He reached into his pocket and pulled his hand out.

On his palm sat the very first little fox enamel pin.

Andrew stared at his hand. Then he stared at Neil. Neil reached out, a small gesture. Quietly, “Yes or no?”

Andrew nodded, rigid. Neil pinched his t-shirt between his fingers—careful not to touch skin—and pinned the little fox in. He let go of the t-shirt. It dropped back, heavy at the left of his chest where the little fox was pinned—cold where metal touched skin.

Andrew stared at Neil. Neil laughed softly at the little fox.

“Now Palmetto is with you everywhere you go,” Neil said lightly. “There’s no shaking it off.”

Andrew ripped his gaze away. Neil took a long drag of his cigarette and looked up, breathing out smoke. His hand dangled by his side, a hair’s breadth away.

Their knuckles grazed. Still looking at the skyline, Andrew touched the tip of Neil’s fingers—hooked their pinkies. A brief surprise, then Neil was turning his own hand, an opening—an offering. Andrew slid his hand through and twined their fingers. Neil’s hand was as he imagined, soft and firm and calloused.

The rain kept falling. At the left of his chest, the locking clasp was as warm as skin.


End file.
